Achaea: Land of Dreams (but not all dreams)

I play this game I absolutely love. I would recommend it to
anybody who enjoys role playing or D&D or Might and Magic or any of the
related genres.

You create yourself a persona, join a Guild and/or City each bringing its own
skills, conflicts, and potential friendships, and immerse yourself in this totally imaginary
world. It is a world filled with dragons and magic and many adventures,
along with a wide variety of the equivalent of chat rooms imbedded into the game
system where folks of the same groups or interests can converse even while
playing, some within the personas of their character, others about non-game,
real life things. (And yes, many find new friendships and even romance.)

It's just fun.

You can mindlessly kill things.

I know that sounds like an odd thing to enjoy, but it provides an
amazing cathartic relief, and no, it doesn't make me want to run out and kill
real people. Honest. Okay. Orcs I would still kill. But only
because they give disproportionately high experience.

You can earn bunches of gold

No, it's not real gold, but the gold you can earn in the game does allow you
to make purchases for something called "credits," that can be used to
enhance your character in a number of ways. Those "credits" can
also be purchased for real money, so in effect you are gaining an actual
financial benefit if you planned on buying credits, or wanted to buy them,
but could not otherwise afford to do so.

You can live in a better world

Okay, that's not entirely true either. Small-minded people and jerks
are even more so in this world, where they are free from restraints placed on
them by civilized society. A handful, in particular, come to mind, but
that's an entirely different matter. But, in general, the world is a
better place, with many folks who want to do for others, rather than do to
others. And even those who battle believe they do so for a just cause,
whether that cause be objectively (or even subjectively) "evil"
or "good."

One of the first things I check at any new site or game is how they deal
with, and what policies they have, about harassment based on sexual
orientation.

Since the game environment includes conflict and war,
where characters can be harmed or killed, I check in particular whether gays and
lesbians are "protected" in a genre that lends itself to in game acts
of violence.

It is one thing to kill, or be killed, because it fits into game play, it's
another thing for it to happen because your character is gay or lesbian.
(It should be noted that not all who play gay and lesbian characters are gay or
lesbian in their real lives --- folks do enjoy "role playing"
something they are not, whether that be orientation, gender, age, or any one of
a number of real life characteristics.)

So, one of the things I immediately noticed about Achaea was that as part of
its in game marriages, there is no bar to same sex marriages, in fact, they are
widespread, and very accepted.

Additionally, Achaea is very good
about not allowing harassment on the basis of orientation (or gender, much to
the relief of women who are hit on in un- relented fashion in many, if not
most, online communities).

The first question of whether Achaea would put its money where its mouth was
arose when one of my friends wanted to name himself in a way to honor another
character, choosing to be called, "Kuniko, Prythe's Little Lesbian."

The leader of his Guild objected. On many grounds. All of which
were specious. He was convinced to leave it to the folks who
run the game, operating under the impression they would be of the same opinion
so that he would not have to be the "bad guy." In
fact, one of the employees who helps run the game did ask "Kuniko" to
change his name so this leader thought he would get the result he wanted, without
having to take the heat for a bad decision.

I wrote to the owner of the game, outlining what had happened, and received
in return a very positive response, agreeing with all my points, and concurring
that the name did not violate any game play rules or provisions. (It
should be noted that "Guilds" and "Cities" can make
any ridiculous rules they want -- and quite often do -- with minimal restraint, but in this case the
Guild leader chose to abide by his previous statement that if the name was
within game rules, he would not require it to be changed.)

I was happy.

Heck, I was pretty and witty and gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

But...

The game also has a system of creating families, and therein lies the only
area in which I feel its gay and lesbian players and characters are not treated
as well as the others.

The system is called "bloodlining" and under this system it
is treated under the rules that the folks who become your parents are your
"blood" parents, having given birth to you the old fashioned way.

That's the rule.

But that's not the practice.

Folks write backgrounds and histories where their families, parents, entire
villages were lost to raiders. Or, they wander the lands not
knowing their parents. This stems from the fact that all folk start
game play at the age of 18.

So many consider themselves adopted.

But the blood lining system only allows for two parents, one female, one male

So I asked that it be changed to allow for this adoption by two people of the
same gender.

And was told that since this was intended to reflect actual birth, that was
not possible.

(It is amusing however to note that one can be "bloodlined"
by only one person. When it is a single woman I guess the assumption is that the
child was conceived immaculately, and when by a single man he must have had a
baby dropped on his doorstep without knowing who he had the child with --
and yes, my tongue is firmly in cheek.)

There are two obvious problems with this argument...

So, let's say that two people of the same gender can't have a child
together in the "real world." Nor do Orcs or Dragons or
People who can change into Animals, or Living Forests, or any one of a
number of things that exist in this land exist in the "real
world."

Whatever your belief about cloning, the technology is developing, there
will be human clones, and same gender couples will be able to have babies
genetically related to both of them without the use of the eggs or sperm of
siblings or other blood relatives.

I think however the owner of the game is a good guy and the "No"
boils down to dollars. The coding would take time, and therefore money,
and there are other improvements and additions the game needs that would be
important to a larger portion of its current customers.

So, here is what I suggest.

Come play the game.

You'll love it, and thank me for introducing you to it.

But at the same time let the owner know you are trying out the game
because you read this article, and because you heard they're really good to their gay
and lesbian customers --- but that you'd like them to go the extra step and
create some form of official recognition of gay and lesbian families that
integrates effectively within the existing system.